NENA VARGAS-TANTOCO SHOWS OFF PRODUCTS FROM HER BELOVED NEGROS
Unique fashion accessories such as bags, necklaces and bracelets will be among the products at this year’s Negros Trade Fair (NTF) on Sept. 17 to Oct. 1 at the Glorietta Activity Center in Makati.
The fair will feature 72 companies offering dresses, tops, silk and cotton scarves, food products, and home furnishings made from abaca and rattan.
Nena Tantoco, a Negrense herself, hosted the media launch at her home Villa Marina in Sta. Elena Golf and Country Estate, a development that was once a sugarcane field and sugar mill.
Nena has been supporting the trade fair for many years and has great memories of summer and Christmas holidays in Bacolod where her parents lived and worked on their hacienda.
Raised by her grandmother Lelay Manuela Soriano, Nena grew up having Visayan food, “and when we’d come to Negros, my mom cooked all the comfort food like chicken inasal, chicken with tanglad, inihaw
na baboy, lumpia, paksiw na isda, etc.” Negrense food is a big part of her family’s regular Sundays at Villa Marina but now mixed with the Tantoco side of cooking, because that’s what her husband Rico Tantoco grew up with. “My mother-in-law Glecy’s
cocido and pochero are to die for! Since the Tantoco kids grew up abroad, their Italian food is amazing, too (Ambassador Bienvenido Tantoco was posted to the Vatican).”
Given that food and decorating houses are two things that Nena loves, she was the perfect host for this luncheon, but she got some help from fellow Negrenses, too.
Chef JP Anglo of Sarsa Kitchen did a culinary demonstration of quick Ilonggo dishes like hala-an curried guinamos sa gata and squid ink tuyo batwan pancit with crispy crablets. This was followed by a delicious spread of Ilonggo dishes by Katrina Legarde of Chicken Sarap.
Negros Trade Fair started during the sugar crisis in the 1980s, when world prices dropped and many hacienderos lost their farms. The sugar bowl of the Philippines, Negros Occidental, experienced widespread poverty as the prices further declined over the years.
Fifteen Negrense women — housewives of hacienderos — got together and took up courses at the DTI in Manila to learn about merchandising and making handicrafts.
“The mission was just to help out in those desperate times and from there, about 20 have become exporters,” says Mike Claparols of Interweave and Creative Definitions. “This year, the food section is bigger than gifts and house ware.”
Now in its 32nd year, it’s the country’s longest running provincial trade fair and is held annually in Metro Manila since 1985. The fair supports small and medium enterprises under the umbrella organization Association of Negros Producers (ANP).
All the companies are enabling people to remain in their communities by providing them with jobs. For instance, the Negros Nine weavers — six women and three men — come from a remote area in the mountains of Kabankalan City, where employment opportunities are very few but weaving gives them enough money to support their families and send their children to school.
Founded by Columban priest Fr. Brian Gore, Negros Nine partnered with Creative Definitions co-owners Mike and Banj Claparols in 2016 to help them with marketing and product development. Made of 100-percent Philippine cotton, the products benefit 200 students in the Nutrition Program of the Colombo Elementary School in Kabankalan.
Nena explains that sugar workers depend on their landlords to provide jobs and sugar is a six-month cyclical work — you plant it and then wait for six months for it to grow. Silay Export two decades ago wanted to help supplement the income of these farmers. It makes bespoke products and has been lucrative for workers that it is now their main livelihood.
Kiculo by KitKat Cusi Lobaton had the same idea — to provide the women income to support their farmer husbands. Kiculo creates innovative products using indigenous materials or traditional weaving and work with talented artisans. Kiculo has trained a total of 28 women laborers and urban poor from Victorias, Sum-Ag, Murcia and ERH GK Mother’s Circle in bag weaving using pandan leaves.
Domesticity by Mariel San Agustin, based in San Carlos, produces home accessories, storage pieces, bath products, kitchen, organizing and entertaining essentials as well as gift items for corporate events.
Domesticity employs beneficiaries of the Dr. Rafael San Agustin Legacy Village in San Carlos City with a total of 12 employees and 12 contractual workers. Domesticity helps nearby communities and the GK Village by funding ongoing values formation programs.
Listening to their partnerships with foundations and communities, it seems to me that the crisis that the crash of sugar prices caused in the 1980s pulled the province together in an amazing way. Thirtytwo years after, even with many companies becoming bigger than they ever imagined, they still carry that spirit of community. Maybe this is the Negrense way, after all.
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Visit the author’s travel blog at www.findingmyway.net. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @iamtanyalara.
The Negros Trade Fair, with the theme “Food for Thought,” runs from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1 at the Glorietta Activity Center, Makati City. For more information, log on to http://www. negrostradefair.com.